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Tuesday, November 29, 2011

"Anarchism and Anarchy: A Historical Perspective" is an excellent opening Talk at the 2009 North American Anarchist Studies Network Conference by Barry Pateman, anarchist historian and writer. As well as anarchist historiography, Barry touches on organisational issues and his experiences of the 1984/5 Miners' Strike.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

The following is an early draft of the introduction to my paper on Philip Josephs and early anarchism in New Zealand. It's likely to change over time, but I post it to a) reassure the IAS that I'm on track, b) because others may be interested, and c) to get some feedback.

Philip Josephs—a
Latvian-born Jew, recent arrival to New Zealand by way of Scotland, and
self-proclaimed anarchist—took to the floor of the Wellington 1906 May Day
demonstration amidst orchestral outbursts and a flurry of motions. ‘This meeting,’
moved Josephs, ‘sends its fraternal greetings to our comrades engaged in the
universal class war, and pledges itself to work for the abolition of the
capitalistic system and the substitution in New Zealand of a co-operative
commonwealth, founded on the collective ownership of the land and the means of
production and distribution.’1 The
motion, as well as highlighting his involvement in the radical milieu of New
Zealand’s capital, conveys the key concepts of his anarchism—internationalism,
mass collective action, and socialism.

However if one were to form an understanding of anarchism based on the
newspapers of the day, or from the accounts of New Zealand’s labour movement by
certain historians, a very different conclusion would be drawn. On the rare occasions
it is mentioned, anarchism is used hysterically by the press to denounce or
decry; by labour leaders in order to show the fallacy of their opponent’s
positions; and by Labourist historians to symbolise wayward ideas or acts of
extremism—painting a nightmarish picture of anarchist practice in the vein of
Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday.2 ‘Gods Own Country is not safe from the
vagaries of the person who believes in the bomb as opposed to argument,’
bellowed the Marlborough Express
in 1907.

Although highly exaggerated, the Express article contained one truth. God’s Own Country—the
‘workingman’s paradise’ that was New Zealand in the early years of the
twentieth century—had anarchists in its midst. To describe this small number as
a coherently organised movement would be another exaggeration, but nonetheless,
those that subscribed to anarchism in New Zealand were a valid part of the
labour movement, imparting uncredited ideas and influence. Unfortunately these
radicals have fared badly in labour historiography—even more so than their
communist counterparts who, at least, are mentioned, even if they are
‘frequently dealt with by a very brief, generally dismissive, characterisation,
often little more than a caricature.’3
New Zealand anarchists and their commitment to social change deserves more than
the relative silence that currently represents their struggle.

Indeed, the only work on anarchism in New Zealand during the turbulent
teens is the indispensable 32-page pamphlet ‘Troublemakers’ Anarchism and
Syndicalism: The Early Years of the Libertarian Movement in Aotearoa/New
Zealand, by Frank Prebble. Drawing
on snippets of primary and mainly secondary sources, his research was
pioneering in that it was the first specific work on anarchism—highlighting a
definite strand of libertarian praxis in New Zealand that has been overlooked.
Yet as Prebble notes in the introduction, ‘this pamphlet is not complete, much
of the information is very fragmentary and a lot more work needs to be done.’4

Apart from the small number of its adherents, one of the reasons that
early anarchism in New Zealand has been understudied and why further research
is difficult, is due to the lack of historical records:

a great deal of material has simply been lost due to
the transitory characteristics of events. Those who were active in personal
discussions and other forms of activism in their dynamic, often convulsing, and
ever changing world often did not see the need or lacked the literacy to be
able to document their ideas… what is left as source material are the thoughts
only of those who were literate, who spoke loudly enough to be documented by
others, or who wished to make themselves heard in a more durable way.5

Another factor that
has limited past anarchist historiography is the tendency to view its subject/s
solely within national boundaries. Anarchism was a transnational movement—built
upon global economic integration and both formal and informal networks crossing
national lines.6 When framed within
geographical limits anarchism in New Zealand certainly appears submerged in a
sea of ‘pink’ socialism, even insignificant. Yet a transnational lens allows
New Zealand anarchists to be viewed as part of a wider, international movement,
spurred on by transoceanic migration, doctrinal diffusion, financial flows,
transmission of information and symbolic practices, and acts of solidarity.7 The role of New Zealand anarchism, both
in the New Zealand labour movement and its own international movement,
increases in scope when placed in such a context.

With that in mind, and by drawing on work by Constance Bantman and
others,8 this contribution will explore early
anarchism in New Zealand through a biography of one of its key players. The
transnational nature of anarchism in the period between its emergence in the
workers movement of the late 1860’s, and the interwar years, can be seen in the
migration and activity of Philip Josephs (1876-1946). His sustained activism,
whether from the soapbox or through the mailbox, and his involvement in the class
struggle that swept through New Zealand prior to the First World War, makes
Josephs one of New Zealand’s most important and pioneering anarchists.

As well as providing previously scarce biographical information on
Josephs, I hope to convince the reader of three main claims. Firstly, before
the arrival of Josephs in New Zealand the ‘broad anarchist tradition’—defined
by Schmidt and van der Walt as a revolutionary form
of libertarian socialism against social and economic hierarchy (specifically
capitalism and the state), in favour of international class struggle and
revolution from below in order to create a self-managed, socialist, and
stateless social order9—had next
to no organised presence. There were anarchists and anarchist ideas in New
Zealand before Josephs, but it was his activity within the New Zealand
Socialist Party and later through his formation of New Zealand’s first
anarchist collective, The Freedom Group, that ensured a level of organised
anarchism previously absent from the wider labour movement.

The second point is one of legitimacy: anarchism was a valid part of the
New Zealand Labour movement—directly through the activity of Philip Josephs, or
indirectly due to anarchist ideas. Although often missing from the indexes of
New Zealand labour histories, anarchism was ‘more influential than most have
realised.’10 The anarchist communism
of Josephs reflects the rejection of violent individualism (propaganda by the
deed) and the move back to the labour movement taken by the majority of anarchists
in the late 1880’s. His support of syndicalist class struggle and the general
strike, and his activity alongside the local branches of the Industrial Workers
of the World (IWW) typifies the relationship of anarchism with revolutionary
syndicalism. Indeed, if one went so far as employing Schmidt and van der Walt’s
definition of syndicalism being a variant and strategy of the broad
anarchist tradition, the era of the New Zealand Federation of Labor (the ‘Red
Feds’) of 1908-1913 can be seen in a whole new light.11

Finally, the New Zealand anarchist movement, and Josephs in particular,
was rooted within the international anarchist movement.Josephs’ birth in Latvia, his radicalisation
in Glasgow, Scotland, and his almost two decades in New Zealand before leaving
for Australia highlights the transient nature of labour; while his distribution
of international anarchist literature, and personal networking with overseas
revolutionaries and groups such as Freedom (UK) and the Mother Earth Publishing
Association (USA), illustrates the doctrinal diffusion and sharing of
information so vital to informal, intercontinental anarchist networks.
This sharing went both ways: Josephs’ activities, the bankruptcy of
state-socialist legislation, and accounts of the 1912 Waihi Strike in New
Zealand popped up on the pages of various anarchist journals abroad, lending
weight to the notion that:

anarchism was not a Western European doctrine that
diffused outwards, perfectly formed, to a passive ‘periphery.’ Rather, the
movement emerged simultaneously and transnationally, created by interlinked
activists on many continents—a pattern of interconnection, exchange and
sharing, rooted in ‘informal internationalism.’'12

Josephs personifies
the interlinked activist, operating within a small local scene but with an eye
towards international events and developments. As a result, anarchism took hold
in New Zealand—the Freedom Group of 1913 being the first of many anarchist
collectives to play a vibrant part in the history of the New Zealand left.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Can
we find alternatives to the failed radical projects of the twentieth
century? What are the possible forms of struggle today? How do we fight
back against the misery of our crisis-ridden present?

These are some of the questions posed in a number of recent
publications on the ‘buzzword’ that is communisation, illustrating a
rich history of thought that has its roots in the decomposition of
proletariat ‘identity’ and the crisis of 1970′s capitalism. Bringing
together voices from inside and outside of these currents Communization and Its Discontents
treats Communization as a problem to be explored rather than a
solution. Taking in the new theorisations of Communization proposed by
Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee, Theorie Communiste,
post-autonomists, and others, it offers critical reflections on the
possibilities and the limits of these contemporary forms, strategies,
and tactics of struggle.

Featured in the book is the work of Endnotes, a journal also worth exploring. The introduction to Endnotes #1, Bring Out Your Dead,
nicely summarises a key debate between two major players in the
development of communisation theory, and also provides a concise
definition:

…groups like Mouvement Communiste, Négation, and La Guerre Sociale
advocated a conception of revolution as the immediate destruction of
capitalist relations of production, or “communisation”. As we shall see,
the understanding of communisation differed between different groups,
but it essentially meant the application of communist measures within
the revolution — as the condition of its survival and its principle
weapon against capital. Any “period of transition” was seen as
inherently counter-revolutionary, not just in so far as it entailed an
alternative power structure which would resist “withering away” (c.f.
anarchist critiques of “the dictatorship of the proletariat”), nor
simply because it always seemed to leave unchallenged fundamental
aspects of the relations of production, but because the very basis of
workers’ power on which such a transition was to be erected was now seen
to be fundamentally alien to the struggles themselves. Workers’ power
was just the other side of the power of capital, the power of
reproducing workers as workers; henceforth the only available
revolutionary perspective would be the abolition of this reciprocal
relation.

Another recent addition to the literature is Sic, an international journal on communisation from Endnotes, Blaumachen, Théorie Communiste, Riff-Raff and more:

In the course of the revolutionary struggle, the
abolition of the division of labour, of the State, of exchange, of any
kind of property ; the extension of a situation in which everything is
freely available as the unification of human activity, that is to say
the abolition of classes, of both public and private spheres – these are
all “measures” for the abolition of capital, imposed by the very needs
of the struggle against the capitalist class. The revolution is
communisation ; communism is not its project or result.

One does not abolish capital for communism but by communism…

This is only a brief summary as there are a number of other sources
always arising on the topic, but there is much anarchists and other
radicals can learn from some of the debates and theory listed above.

Monday, November 21, 2011

From the arrival of colliers in the 1870s to New Zealand’s biggest strikes, miners have played an active part in the struggle against capitalism. As Len Richardson points out: ‘Coalminers occupy a special place in the history of industrial radicalism in New Zealand’. Socialists of many shades considered them ‘a revolutionary vanguard destined to bring capitalism to its knees’—to employers they were troublemakers holding back the progress of modern development. Regardless of how they are painted, there is no doubting the importance of miners in New Zealand’s labour history.

Miners were some of New Zealand first migrants, transplanted from the English coalfields to the ‘New World’ in the late 1870s. Unfortunately for the colonial coal masters, these miners brought with them the ‘twin evils’ of Methodism and unionism, and in 1884 formed the first miners’ union in Denniston. They quickly went about organising their own Federations to accommodate the diverse situations of the coalfields—the Amalgamated Miners’ and Labourers’ Association in the 1880s and the more successful Miners’ Federation of 1908. Meanwhile, during the Maritime Strike of 1890 miners took strike action in support of the general seamen’s strike.

The latter Federation was the result of a dramatic strike in the town of Blackball —traditional home of New Zealand radicalism. Growing militancy was stoked by the arrival of radicals like Patrick Hickey and the propaganda of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Their advocacy of direct action and revolutionary industrial unionism related to the miners’ disenchantment with the labour laws of the day, such as the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration (ICA) Act, which disallowed unions from striking. In 1908 the formation of a New Zealand Socialist Party branch signalled the rise of revolutionary ideas in the valley.

From 1907, ‘Blackball miners and their employers had been on a collision course’ over conditions, Richardson says, so when seven miners were fired for taking 30 minutes ‘crib-time’ instead of the 15 imposed by the company it was the final straw. All 120 Blackball miners ceased work on 27 February 1908. This was a deliberate challenge to the ICA Act and the Arbitration Court tried to intervene, but community solidarity was too strong.

After three months the company gave in, sending waves of enthusiasm for direct action throughout the country. The resulting Miners Federation grew into the ‘Red’ Federation of Labour, whose preamble stated ‘the working class and the employing class having nothing in common’. This ‘baptism of fire’ did not end in Blackball however, for the Red Feds soon found themselves involved in two of New Zealand’s most violent labour struggles: the Waihi Strike of 1912 and the Great Strike of 1913.

The Red Feds encouraged class struggle free of ‘labour’s leg iron’: the ICA Act. Affiliated unions, including the miners of the Waihi Trade Union of Workers, began to de-register from the ICA. So in 1912 when 30 engine drivers in Waihi re-registered under the ICA (reportedly encouraged by the bosses), the union struck in protest. On 13 May, Waihi came to a standstill. However the strike failed. Intense police repression and violence saw the balance of power shift to the bosses. During what became known as the ‘Black Week’, the Miners’ Hall was stormed, striker Fred Evans was killed by a police baton to the head (becoming the first worker do die in an industrial dispute in New Zealand), and unionists and their families were driven out of town as police stood by.

On the heels of the Waihi Strike came the Great Strike of 1913, in which miners played an important part. In October, Huntly miners called a strike when the company dismissed two union executive members, while in Wellington the watersiders struck when the Union Steam Ship Company refused to pay travelling time for shipwrights. Strike action soon spread. Miners on the West Coast took wildcat strike action without waiting for official sanction, and shut down the ports of Westport and Greymouth. Fearful of the miners’ militancy, explosives were shifted from the Runanga state mine to a private munitions magazine in Greymouth.

The Great Strike involved some 16,000 workers and resulted in a general strike in Auckland. Massive demonstrations and union control of the waterfront was eventually broken with ‘Massey’s Cossacks’—farmers enrolled as special police—and the hand of the state. Before long naval ships in the port of Wellington had their guns trained on the city, machine guns lined the streets, and soldiers with naked bayonets protected ‘free’ labour to re-open the docks. By December, strike leaders were arrested for sedition, the strike collapsed, and the coalition of government and employers gained a complete victory. Miners, true to their fighting spirit, were some of the last to return to work.

After the Great Strike, miners battled employers over conditions and the contracts system, until the outbreak of the First World War threw up new a new issue: conscription. When the government introduced a national register of men of military age, West Coast miners threatened industrial action to halt what was perceived to be the first-step towards compulsory conscription. A ‘go slow’ was put in place in late 1916. The government promptly assured miners that if called up their appeals would be favourably heard, but nonetheless miners were refused exemption until coal production was back to normal rates. In April 1917, miners on the West Coast struck, demanding that all military conscription cease. A compromise was made—legal action against the strikers and the refused exemptions were dropped in exchange for a promise of no strike action for the duration of the war. Although radical anti-conscriptionists on the Grey Valley were unsatisfied, the miners accepted the government’s terms.

Throughout the 20th century, miners were also heavily involved in revolutionary political groups. As well as the aforementioned New Zealand Socialist Party and the IWW, miners were members of New Zealand’s first Communist Parties. West Coast Marxists were involved in the New Zealand Marxian Association (1918), the Communist Party of New Zealand (1921), and the West Coast Communist Federation (1922). In 1925, Blackball became the headquarters of the Communist Party, whose secretary in 1927 was also the secretary of the United Mine Workers, a federation of miners formed in 1923.

From the 1919 Alliance of Labour and the unemployed workers’ unions of the Depression years to the 1951 Lockout, miners featured in the many struggles of labour against capital. However the defeat of 1951 signalled what Richardson describes as the ‘slow and lingering death of mining unionism and the communities that sustained it’. Mining no longer played the crucial role it had during its development, technologies changed, and communities fragmented. Yet miners’ struggles continued, and will continue as long as mining and capitalism exist. As recently as 2009-2010, miners at Stockton, Spring Creek, Rotowaro and Huntly East took industrial action against Solid Energy, showing that the struggles of miners in New Zealand are far from history.

SourcesLen Richardson, Coal, Class and Community: The United Mineworkers of New Zealand 1880-1960, Auckland University Press, 1995; Bert Roth & Janny Hammond, Toil and Trouble: The Struggle for a Better Life in New Zealand, Methuen, 1981.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

A handful of crew in NYC (including Justseeds and Occuprint) have been hard at work on an all poster edition of the Occupied Wall Street Journal, the paper that was produced by those occupying Wall Street. I was lucky enough to be approached by Josh MacPhee and get my poster, Never in History, into the mix.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the picture of the Occupy Wall Street Library, with my poster, smack bang in the middle.

I'm stoked people are seeing it (around 20,000 copies were printed) and that of all places, it made it onto the canvas walls of the people's library. I should note that I would never have made the poster if it wasn't for the good folk at Kotare Trust commissioning me to do so.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

The Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) is an American-based organisation designed to foster the development of anarchism, primarily through grants but also through their journal, Perspectives. From their website:

Since the inception of the Institute for Anarchist Studies in 1996, the
grant program has been a central project. By awarding grants to radical
writers and translators around the world -- many of whom work without
the support of academic institutions, and are connected in important
ways to the movements about which and for which they write -- the IAS
has tried to support the development of the theoretical tools necessary
for critiquing the systems of domination in which we are enmeshed as
well as proliferating resistances and alternatives to these systems in
order to maximize freedom, justice, and dignity.

A few months ago I thought I would have a crack at submitting an application for the latest round of funding. I'm currently researching Philip Josephs (founder of New Zealand's first anarchist collective) and early anarchism in New Zealand, so I knew a grant of any kind would really help with travel/research costs.

I thought I may have a slim chance, as Mark Derby is the only other New Zealander to win a grant so far. But when I received an email saying that I had won a grant for $750 USD from the IAS towards this project I was pretty damn surprised! This much-needed financial boost will help me employ a researcher at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, where the complete archive of the UK Freedom Group is held. It will also get me to the National Archives in Wellington, a trip that I usually can't justify due to the costs involved. In return the IAS gets an article on anarchism in New Zealand for their journal, as does New Zealand labour historiography.

Thanks to the IAS for this amazing award, and to everyone who has helped me along the way—both with my Joe Hill research and my current project. Hopefully I can do Philip and the anarchist movement justice.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Justseeds bloggers recently pointed out this great website of Polish film posters from the 1940's onwards. As well as being visually striking, a number of these posters contain subtle political overtones—film posters escaping the eyes of the Soviet censors. It was a format that allowed Polish designers to critique Soviet rule in a mainstream context.

Friday, November 4, 2011

“This type of historical awareness is a key reminder
that we still live in a society deeply divided by class. The actions of
the past stand as inspiring, yet unfinished movements to continue to
build upon and to adapt to present conditions.” (Nicholas Lampert, Realising the Impossible).

With
occupations and general strikes taking place around the world, what
better time to read up on some ideas to help further the struggle. We
can learn from those who have walked similar paths before us—their
methods and tactics, successes and failures. And we can be inspired to
push our actions further.

Here's a few titles that we hope may be relevant:

Lucy Parsons: Freedom, Equality & Solidarity – Writings & Speeches, 1878-1937
For anarchist Lucy Parsons, a general strike and an occupation are synonyms.
Her amazing speech can be read here.
Other elements of her talks resonate greatly with the present moment.
Parsons discusses her experiences with the police and state murder of
her husband, sadly relevant to recent police violence. Parsons talks
about how U.S. residents drew inspiration from struggles around the
world, another parallel to the present where protests around the world
look to each other for ideas and motivation. Parsons also discusses
gender divisions within movements of her day, issues which we still need
to address today.Read more here.

Rabble Rousers & Merry Pranksters: A History of Anarchism in Aotearoa/New Zealand from the Mid-1950s to the Early 1980sRabble Rousers and Merry Pranksters
captures some of the imagination, the audacity, the laughs and the
wildness that animated many of the social movements of the sixties and
seventies in Aoteaora/New Zealand. During this time, particularly from
the late sixties to the early seventies, an astonishingly broad-based
revolt occurred throughout the country. Thousands of workers, Maori,
Pacific people, women, youth, lesbians, gays, students,
environmentalists and others rebelled against authority. Innovative new
styles and anarchistic methods of political dissent became popular.Read more here.

We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism
7″
5″, b&w photo-studded tour of the global justice movement’s many
locales and leaderless actors, from a mostly London-based editorial
collective that includes an editor of New Internationalist magazine. The
book is divided into seven primer-like chapters-”Emergence,”
“Networks,” “Autonomy,” “Carnival,” “Clandestinity,” “Power” and
“Walking”-each with a headline-like subtitle (e.g., “Power: building it
without taking it”). The book as a whole makes a case for “direct
action,” or organized resistance to specific policies or decisionsRead more here

Gathering Rage: The Failure Of 20th Century Revolutions To Develop A Feminist Agenda
In Gathering Rage,
writer, poet,and activist Margaret Randall describes how two of these
revolutions, in Nicaragua and Cuba, addressed or failed to address a
feminist agenda. Writing as both observer and participant, Randall
vividly describes how in each case, to varying degrees and in different
ways, women’s issues were gradually pushed aside. Combining anecdotes
with analysis, she shows how distorted visions of liberation and
shortcomings in practice left a legacy that not only shortchanged women
but undermined the revolutionary project itself.Read more here

The Essential Rosa Luxemburg
This new, authoritative introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s two most important works presents the full text of Reform or Revolution and The Mass Strike, with explanatory notes, appendices, and introductions.

One
of the most important Marxist thinkers and leaders of the twentieth
century, Rosa Luxemburg is finding renewed interest among a new
generation of activists and critics of global capitalism.Read more here

An Anarchist FAQ
The
bible of anarchism! This exhaustive volume, the first of two, seeks to
provide answers for the curious and critical about anarchist theory,
history, and practice. More a reference volume than a primer, An
Anarchist FAQ eschews curt answers and engages with questions in a
thorough, matter-of-fact style.

Having been an internet staple for
over a decade, we are proud to offer this solicitously edited print
version. AFAQ’s oversized and affordable format (topping out at over 700
pages) will ensure it a place on every shelf, where it will be
referenced again and again.Read more here

How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth
Bringing
to bear more than twenty years of experience as an environmental
journalist, Kempf describes the invincibility that many of the world’s
wealthy feel in the face of global warming, and how their unchecked
privilege is thwarting action on the single most vexing problem facing
our world.

In this important primer on the link between global
ecology and the global economy, Kempf makes the following observations:
First, that the planet’s ecological situation is growing ever worse,
despite the efforts of millions of engaged citizens around the world.
And second, despite environmentalists’ emphasis that “we’re all in the
same boat,” the world’s economic elites—who continue to benefit by
plundering the environment—have access to “lifeboats” that insulate them
from the resulting catastrophes.Read more here

This
Friday we will be ordering new books from AK Press (once they're back
from the Oakland General Strike!), so stay tuned for some new material
over the next month or so. Also, Justseeds posters are back on the site
for your viewing pleasure.
In Solidarity,Katipo Books Workers' Co-Operative